India

Rescue workers used helicopters and boats to evacuate hundreds of people stranded on their home rooftops following unprecedented flooding in the Kerala where more than 160 people have died so far.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee - one of India's tallest leaders in the post-Independence era, three-time Prime Minister, and the only non-Congress leader yet to complete a full term in office - passed away at 5.05pm on Thursday. He was 93.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee during his political life evoked two dominant reactions - some described him as the "right man in the wrong party" while others argued that "his moderate face had helped the BJP acquire legitimacy".

Marooned people in Kerala's towns are "rationing" their mobile phone use as they desperately try to contact the authorities to convey their location and ask for rescue teams to be despatched.

The Supreme Court on Thursday directed the sub-committee of the National Crisis Management Committee (NCMC) to decide by Friday morning whether to reduce the water level at the Mullaperiyar dam in Kerala from 142ft to 139ft in view of the floods.

BJP the single-largest party in the May 1996 polls and Vajpayee becomes Prime Minister. Quits after 13 days, unable to stitch together a majority

The unrelenting rain killed about 30 people in Kerala on Thursday, most of them in landslides, raising the death toll since August 8 to at least 92.

A seven-day state mourning; a funeral procession to be led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah; a flood of eulogies on Twitter.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi said on Thursday that any other leader describing India as an elephant that had been sleeping and had woken up only in 2014 would be declared anti-national but Prime Minister Narendra Modi got away with it.

"Fireworks of numbers, announcements and schemes" is how the Shiv Sena described Prime Minister Narendta Modi's speech from the ramparts of the Red Fort delivered on Wednesday on the occasion of Independence Day, while raising questions on the deprecation of the rupee, demonetisation, the BJP spending tax-payers' money on publicity and claims on development.